by Oren Dorell, USA TODAY

by Oren Dorell, USA TODAY

As Ukraine's parliament voted Saturday to impeach the country's president, replace key ministers and hold elections much sooner than government and opposition leaders agreed to Friday, analysts say the country remains on a precarious cusp and vulnerable to separatist elements and Russian intervention.

"The problem is the situation is moving very fast, and there are so many actors not accountable to national governments that the situation will remain extremely dangerous for the next few months," said Andrew Weiss, a White House expert on Russia and Ukraine under former president Bill Clinton. "It's uncertain what Russia actually wants to emerge from the chaos of the past week. We are in uncharted waters."

Russia is worried less about instability in Ukraine than about a Ukraine that will be closer to the European Union, which would threaten Russian President Vladimir Putin's plan to create a Eurasian union, dominated by Russia and Ukraine, said Janusz Bugajski, a Washington foreign policy analyst.

The United States should issue "a very strong message to Moscow not to intervene with Ukrainian military or paramilitaries or to support separatists anywhere in Ukraine," Bugajski said. "It needs to be a strong message from Brussels and Washington (that) any intervention will be unacceptable and there will be consequences from the West."

The White House issued a statement Saturday afternoon noting that the U.S. is "closely monitoring developments" as well as voicing support for the Ukraine people in determining their country's fate.

"Going forward, we will work with our allies, with Russia, and with appropriate European and international organizations to support a strong, prosperous, unified, and democratic Ukraine," the statement read, adding that the administration wishes former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who was released from a prison hospital Saturday, "a speedy recovery."

Tymoshenko said Saturday that she will challenge Ukraine's Russian-backed president, Viktor Yanukovych, who had left the capital. The Rada, the country's parliament, sacked him and replaced the minister of the interior whose security forces were implicated in the violence that resulted in more than 80 deaths last week. The defense minister and attorney general were also voted out.

Meanwhile, Russia's foreign minister on Saturday accused Ukraine's opposition of failing to fulfill its side of a peace deal intended to end the nation's political crisis and urged Western mediators to intervene.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called his German, French and Polish counterparts, who helped broker Friday's agreement between Yanukovych and the opposition. Yanukovych agreed to hold early elections in December and surrender much of his powers, but opposition supporters have kept pushing for his immediate dismissal, and parliament voted Saturday to move the elections to May.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said Lavrov urged his counterparts to use their influence with the Ukrainian opposition, which he said "not only has failed to fulfill any of its obligations, but keeps making new demands under the influence of armed extremists and rioters."

Their actions "pose a direct threat to Ukraine's sovereignty and constitutional order," he said.

Lavrov's angry words raise the dangerous prospect that Moscow may try to disrupt Ukraine's transition to a European, rather than Russian, orientation, Bugajski said.

It could "put an economic squeeze" on Ukraine by withholding or raising prices on natural gas sales that Ukrainians use to heat their homes, abandoning a $15 billion aid package Russia agreed to in November to persuade Yanukovych from joining a trade alliance with the European Union, Bugajski said. And it could support separatism, particularly in Crimea, a majority ethnic Russian province that is home to Russia's Black Sea fleet.

"When the Ukrainian Interior Ministry issued a statement a couple days ago warning against any separatism supported by foreign powers, what they have in mind is Russia fomenting separatism in the Crimea," he said.

President Obama spoke to Putin for about an hour Friday, but "there's not been any strong statement by the European Union or the U.S. deterring Russia, telling them any intervention will be unacceptable and there will be consequences from the West," Bugajski said.

The problem is that if Ukrainian politicians seek to join the European economy, they face a period of economic pain while reforms are implemented that will be politically difficult, and the Western toolkit for opposing Putin there "remains rather meager," Weiss said.

"The Russians have made it abundantly clear they view Ukraine as an issue of cardinal importance," he said. "They have a much bigger checkbook than we do. They put money on the table, and the West has relatively limited political levers inside Ukraine."

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